ome right up here then; but I had to go back to New York, and so I
wrote to you. When your letters came, I always seemed to hear you
speaking in them."

"And when you saw me you were disappointed. I knew it."

"No; not disappointed--"

"Why not? My voice didn't go with my looks; it belonged to a tall,
strong-willed girl."

"No," he protested. "As soon as I got away it was just as it always had
been. I mean that your voice and your looks went together again."

"As soon as you got away?" the girl questioned.

"I mean--What do you care for it, anyway!" he cried, in self-scornful
exasperation.

"I know," she said thoughtfully, "that my voice isn't like me; I'm not
good enough for it. It ought to be Juliet Bingham's--"

"No, no!" he interrupted, with a sort of disgust that seemed not to
displease her, "I can't imagine it!"

"But we can't any of us have everything, and she's got enough as it is.
She's a head higher than I am, and she wants to have her way ten times
as bad."

"I didn't mean that," Langbourne began. "I--but you must think me enough
of a simpleton already."

"Oh, no, not near," she declared. "I'm a good deal of a simpleton myself
at times."

"It doesn't matter," he said desperately; "I love you."

"Ah, that belongs to the time when you thought I looked differently."

"I don't want you to look differently. I--"

"You can't expect me to believe that now. It will take time for me to do
that."

"I will give you time," he said, so simply that she smiled.

"If it was my voice you cared for I should have to live up to it,
somehow, before you cared for me. I'm not certain that I ever could. And
if I couldn't? You see, don't you?"

"I see that I was a fool to tell you what I have," he so far asserted
himself. "But I thought I ought to be honest."

"Oh, you've been _honest_!" she said.

"You have a right to think that I am a flighty, romantic person," he
resumed, "and I don't blame you. But if I could explain, it has been a
very real experience to me. It was your nature that I cared for in your
voice. I can't tell you just how it was; it seemed to me that unless I
could hear it again, and always, my life would not be worth much. This
was something deeper and better than I could make you understand. It
wasn't merely a fancy; I do not want you to believe that."

"I don't know whether fancies are such very bad things. I've had some of
my own," Barbara suggested.

He sat still with his hat between